2 simple reasons why your CRM doesn’t work

If you want to drop the temperature in a meeting room, you only have to mention 3 letters: CRM. Almost everybody with sales experience has had a bad encounter with a CRM. You as well? Find out why CRM did not work or isn’t working for you!

1) Success does not come from doing nothing

In the 80’s CRM systems were sold in cardboard boxes by overenthusiastic salesmen with sales charts showing overwhelming profits. This led to the misunderstanding that once CRM installed, Sales would surge in a spectacular way. Unfortunately this was not true in the eighties, and it is even less true today.

Successful implementation of CRM asks for total dedication by the whole company. Sales and Marketing tend to look over the user acceptance test of a CRM system. This causes the much anticipated CRM getting a cool welcome and ending up being unused.

2) Implementing CRM: not as easy as expected

Practice learns that implementing CRM is far more difficult than implementing ERP. Poor communication between Sales & IT has definitely something to do with this. IT are mostly responsible for the implementation of a CRM system. Their logical and structured manner of thinking could cause conflicts with the quirkier salesmen. If IT want to know how a process should work, they want to have a clearly defined process as an answer. Unfortunately for them, salesmen are not able to give such an answer and will rather give examples or anecdotes for them to work with.

These 2 ways of thinking are out of sync with each other and will cause badly adjusted CRM’s who are doomed to fail. IT tries to put all gathered information into workflows, causing them to be packed with blanks. These blanks get filled in by standard procedures, which are not daily practice to your company. This results in CRM that is based on foreign workflows. Salespeople will not recognise these workflows and will not use them like it should be.

Implementing CRM is very complex and can put lots of pressure on the internal communication within a company. You’ll better be prepared for the worst if all hell breaks loose. Imagine not being able to bill, not knowing anymore who you should pay or should get money from,…

We can help!

After more than 50 CRM projects, CPI has developed its very own methodology which makes it possible to implement a CRM system the right way. We start by having a look at a day in the lives of your company’s salesperson, service operator and commercial manager. We turn our experience from previous projects, sales and IT into solutions for your company. Contact us to have a chat!